


The Price of Power

by fenerkulesi



Category: Baten Kaitos
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:47:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenerkulesi/pseuds/fenerkulesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selling her soul, who thinks about that? It's meaningless when the bargain is struck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Power

**part i**

Rasalas is lovely, it's always been lovely.

Once, Pieda had loved to come here. Now, it's a town of spirits, and she can't reconcile it with what it used to be. She wanders through the village, listening. A young girl can't see her reflection and wonders what's wrong. Scared lovers reassure each other that they'll always be together. Ven says there was a baby. She can't bear to see it after the other children. That was the worst to her; she can't stay in that house for very long.

They were too late. They had failed. If they'd gotten there just a little bit... _no_. She can't let herself feel guilty. She won't stop once she starts. She knows this. Being preoccupied liked that won't serve at all.

She's the first to leave, staying at the entrance to the village before the others are done. It almost feels like running away, but at the same time it only strengthens her resolve. Anger replaces sadness and guilt in her heart as she accompanies her brothers back to Naos. Part of her is happy that the Sandfeeder is unaffected by her magic. She can vent her anger on it as long as she's careful. But she's not careful enough, and not fast enough to dodge its attack. She can only watch as Marno gets in between them – scared at first for him, but that dissipates as the battle goes on, and he emerges victorious.

She hadn't realized he had gotten so skilled.

Where did the time go? Has she gotten that much more skilled herself? Have all of them? Or had he done something on his own that all of them had missed? She doesn't want to ask. She doesn't want to know if she hasn't been as involved in her little brother's life as she should have been.

It makes the rest of the journey back to Naos a little lighter, though, the knowledge that he can take care of himself now. Her injury is fine. She'd been able to heal herself with no problem. When they arrive back at Naos Seph doesn't even stop to rest, and she has no time to do so even if she'd wanted to before he calls the four of them together. Cujam is going to Wiseman, openly embracing his twisted teaching, and she's just surprised that it hadn't happened sooner.

The time in Naos is short. She doesn't know how long they'll stay, but she's determined to make the most of it. Cujam is.... Things might never be the same after that. She's not even sure that they'll return back. She throws herself into cooking, anything to distract her for at least a little. The familiar smells and the rain pounding on the roof are more soothing than she would have thought. She tries to savor them, commit them to memory for when she might need _home_ again.

Before she knows it, it's time to go. She watches Seph say goodbye to Quis, rolling her eyes and telling him to reassure her. Honestly. Their being wary didn't mean everyone else had to be.

If she were to be quite honest, though only to herself, she rather likes Cujam. If it weren't for the fact that it was Wiseman's seat she would not have minded living here. It's so bright and right on the coast, two things that she loves. This time, entry into the town sets her every nerve on edge. The people are happy, but there's something in the air that almost makes it sinister. Everywhere she turns, she sees them mindlessly flying around, and hears them telling each other about how pure their hearts are.

She wraps her arms around herself, and presses closer to her brothers.

When Wiseman comes out, and turns a man into a Magnus, she can't help but wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like. For the first time, she voices the thought, and Thoran brushes it aside almost instantly. It's what she'd expected. They can't afford to start thinking like that. It's a distraction, at best.

Wiseman's manor is cold, and dark, and somehow still less unnerving than Cujam itself. She thinks it's because she'd expected something like this. This was not her first time to see him, and it suits him, after all. Seph grows more and more heated while Wiseman remains as cold as his manor. It isn't long before Wiseman has enough, and attacks them for perceived impudence. She doesn't let herself scream, and she's surprised he lets them go. His power is much greater than she and her brothers could hope to counter. Returning to Naos is the only thing they can do.

But when they get there, it's quiet. Naos shouldn't be this quiet. When they go downstairs, she's horrified. There's nobody alive, and it's all she can do to keep from screaming. Seph sees Quis faster than the rest of them, and she runs as fast as she can, trying as hard as she can to save her. Her best isn't enough, and she fails, and Quis closes her eyes in Seph's arms. Seph screams, and her fingernails make her palms bleed. If only, if only....

She has no choice, now.

Wiseman has annihilated her home, for what? His hideous doctrine of promagnation, and to make to them the point: _don't try to stand against me, for you will fail_. This only makes her more resolute, in her drive to stop him, to do anything that she can. She doesn't cry. She's too numb. She can't begin to imagine what Seph is feeling right now. She's never held anyone to the same regard that he holds Quis, and she doesn't think she ever will, for that kind of thing is not for her. His quest now is to avenge her, and killing Wiseman will only be an added boon to that.

So when Seph makes the suggestion that they head to Zaurak Keep she knows exactly what he's thinking, because she's the one who told them _they_ were there. Saying that she's scared is so much less than what she's truly feeling, and she wishes that there was any other way than this. But she knows that this is something that they have to do, and she _knows_ that there is no other way, and so she goes. She doesn't tell her brothers what to expect, because she doesn't want to think about their reactions. It's selfish, yes, but they'll find out soon enough. By that point, it will be too late to turn back.

The Keep is worse than she'd imagined it would be, with creepy dolls and undead swordsmen and flying... _things_ at every turn. She hates it she hates it _she hates it_ but she knows that she has to keep going, and so she keeps those thoughts to herself. She won't let her brothers down, and only secondary to that is the thought that she cannot let these creatures living at the heart of here know what she truly thinks of them.

When they finally get to the heart of the Keep, she can see Seph hesitate, and steel himself. She doesn't have to wonder what he's thinking. It's been transparent to her in the set of his shoulders and his cold ruthless fighting, and she knows that like her, he does feel guilty for hiding it from their brothers. _It's necessary_ , she tells herself. If they could have been convinced before coming here it would have taken more time than they had. They're shocked, and angered when they find out the truth, and rightfully so. She would have reacted the same way, after all.

She tries, once, to talk Seph out of it. Her voice is desperate, pleading. She knows she can't dissuade him – he would not have gone all the way through this wretched place with only one thought on his mind if he had any other intentions, after all – but still she has to try. Still she has to reconcile within herself the tale that only devastation will come to these people who accept their powers, with the reality of what it is that she herself is seeking. She wants them and she needs them, for she isn't strong enough on her own nor with the powers of her brothers combined with hers to take him down. She's scared, but she calms herself.

And the ends justify the means.

If the situation had been different, she would have punched Seph for offering the Brethren just himself. Like hell the rest of them were going to let him suffer that fate alone. It has to be all of them or none of them; they've come too far together for it to be any other way. Defeating Rudra is child's play, and they're given the Brethren's power. She's elated, at first, when she feels the magic augment coursing through her body. Far more powerful, far more likely to be a match for Wiseman when the five of them attack as one. She's still herself, but at the same time she feels irrevocably changed.

Regret never occurs to her.

When they get back to Naos, Seph decides that they need to give themselves a name, to cement everything. It strikes her as a largely useless gesture – if there was a need for such a thing, they wouldn't have been so united, through everything. Still, she knows why he says it, and as her brothers bicker she tries to come up with something. When she thinks she has one, she can't stop herself from smiling. It's a sentimental name, maybe too much so, but she turns it over in her mind. It fits. She suggests it, and her brothers agree. They leave Naos for the last time. It's all she can do to keep herself from looking back.

She can't shake the chill that courses through her body when she as Malpercio arrives at Cujam, only to see the village completely deserted. It's so much like the last time she was there. Past Cujam lies Atria, an ancient battlefield, fitting for their coming fight. Not even the dragons can stop her. Atria's heart is filled with people, shouting Wiseman's virtues, and coming closer, and preparing their magic to fight them off. She looks around; there's an army in all directions; there's no way out. Her eyes widen.

And then... and then...

All she can see is red, and she can feel bodies falling all around her. Her own has no marks, no blood. She is victorious in her chosen battles. The lust is short lived, and when her vision clears, she looks around at the carnage surrounding her and her brothers. She's horrified, and she doesn't know what to do. Even with the augments given to her by the Dark Brethren, she can't save the lives of any of these people. They're all dead now, and even one would have been far too many to her to have fallen by her own hand. People would do terrible things with the power of their hearts unchecked, but this was just as bad.

She did this. _She_. Did _this_.

When the mages arrive with the Godcrafts, she's stunned. She never expected that her brothers would fall so quickly, so suddenly. She can't even summon the strength to cry out for them before a hand rips through her chest and she herself is killed.

Selling her soul, who thinks about that? It's meaningless when the bargain is struck.

If she hadn't, she would not still be aware. Even though her body is dead, she can still _feel_. Is this what the Dark Brethren wanted from her? Why? What did this get them? She can feel her body being cut apart, smaller pieces being flung by the wayside. She doesn't know what she keeps and what she doesn't. As sure as their blades slice through her flesh, she feels herself whole. Had she only imagined it? She can feel chains of ice wrap around her body – what the mages let her keep, or all of it, she can't tell, it doesn't matter. Her connection with her brothers severs as the chains grow tighter. She tries to scream, tries to reach out for them. Her efforts are in vain.

What happens to her next is unimportant. Her body is carried she knows not where and sealed away, but she pays that no mind. It _hurts_ , and having a dead body is useless to try to fight her way to freedom. No, there's no escaping what the mages have done. Not by her own hand. The power she was given wasn't enough, and still she wonders why, what the Dark Brethren gained.

She misses her brothers more than anything, already, but she knows that they, like her, would pay this same price a thousand times over for even the chance to defeat Wiseman once again. None of them would have simply stood by and done nothing at all. Even had she seen their future and known of their failure, she would have sought that great and terrible power still. She has no doubt in her mind that each of her brothers would have done the same without the slightest hint of a second thought.

She's torn from them for ever. She has no regrets; that she has sworn to herself.

She accepts her fate.

**part ii**

Time passes. She does not know its pace.

She does not know whether she sleeps or wakes. All that she knows, all that she can feel, is pain, so much pain. She feels knives everywhere while at the same time she feels the hangman's rope, thick, and growing ever tighter around her neck. That sensation, however, fades in and out, starting over after a period of rest; just when she's thought she's been given a small reprieve it starts back. The knives are always fresh, always stabbing, always twisting.

Her throat is raw, but she cannot hear herself cry.

She never could imagine suffering like this, not before. She's lonely, so lonely. _This is the price for power._ Over and over and over she tells herself it was worth it.

Over and over and over she convinces herself a little less.

Does she dream? Maybe. It's either that or _knowing_ , and there's no way for her to _know_ , not really. But the distinction doesn't matter. Whatever it is, it's something to take away from her pain and her guilt, and so she welcomes it.

She's tied to the land she was buried in. It should go without saying but it's deeper than that. She can feel it changing, and her distraction is watching the new nation grow. It's her power that's keeping it aloft, and soon she begins to think of it as almost an extension of herself. She hates it at first, though she tries so hard not to. It's unfounded envy, she knows it, but why should these people be free when she cannot be? She wants to lash out in desperate helpless rage and pain, and so she does. She sends a storm; the people weather it. She sends floods; they simply move to higher ground. _Diadem_ , the people call their home, and they come to see her fits of fury as simply life in the Sky. It can be treacherous, but so was life on the Earth.

She wonders if this land had been on the coast, once. It flourishes, becoming bright and vibrant. Without her realizing it, it had, it will become everything she'd loved about the Earth. It maintains a rivalry with one of the other nations. _If this is her, which of her brothers is she always fighting_? Sometimes they're superior, sometimes they're not. It's okay. They always come back from defeat.

It isn't perfect but neither was her home, not even Naos.

She doesn't know how long it is until for the first time she feels something in her stretch and awaken, slowly, slowly, but surely. It's a familiar rush, a familiar power, and she can do nothing but simply let it happen, and then. And then. It's like flipping a switch. A part of her she didn't know was missing is _right there_ and she can't stop _fire_ going through her veins and something happens she doesn't know what and that power is _hers_ again and – Marno? Here? She wants to go to him fights as hard as she can to go to him but her efforts are in vain. For the first time, her chains really felt like _chains_. Can he hear her calling out?

To be so so close, and yet.... It's what she gets. Foolish. After all this time, why did she let herself think that the rules had changed? One more thing to ruminate over. It's not like she doesn't deserve it.

It isn't long after that – it feels like immediately after but she has no way to know – that her pain grows even more intense. Later she will realize that it was only for a moment but _it hurts_ , more than anything that had plagued her in the last who knows how long. The source dissipates quickly but it lingers. How can she not be screaming? How can nobody hear her?

She doesn't realize her chains have become loose.

She manages to calm herself. Something is happening and she wants to needs to know what. A hand grasps her chains. A voice that is not her own thinks: _yes_. It startles her, and she meets the eyes of whose hand it must be without even realizing that she can do so. She can tell he's human, though at the same time there's something unnatural about his gaze that she cannot place. She has only a second to realize that her heart can still ache on another's behalf before he cracks her chains and she's once more blind.

There isn't enough power for her to break them completely on her own, but all she can feel is power. She doesn't know doesn't care where her body is being taken. She doesn't even think to wonder. Her pain is less, things had _stopped_ , she wants to laugh and laugh and laugh. But still she's bound, still she's blind, still she only feels, and her impulses are tempered. No, not yet, can she laugh now before she knows what's coming next? To think she might be completely free, no, she's not so hopeful. She can't let herself think that way; she doesn't know what she'll do if she does and it turns out to be one more trick.

Think it's a trick now. That's the better choice. The power remains but its rush fades away. Her chains grow no looser, crack no more. It's all right. She can handle this.

Everything is still, and she can no longer feel or dream but she still remains aware. The quiet and the lack of pain put her nerves on edge. Something is coming. She wishes she knew what. All she can do is wait for it.

As it turns out, she doesn't have to wait very long. Her sense of time might be distorted but an instinct is telling her that since that final sharp burst, since the boy with the strange eyes, things have moved very quickly. Her instinct is pleased, so pleased, and she doesn't know why. It startles her, but she forces herself not to think about it anymore. She doesn't want to know where that path might lead.

Before she knows it she can feel some very familiar magic. Four sources of it, in fact, and even though it scares her to do it she can't keep herself from hoping from _knowing_ exactly what's going on. They've been reunited again, and her careful trying to keep herself in check falls by the wayside as she joins that strange voice and that strange instinct and laughs and laughs and _laughs_. Her chains break, and her brothers' chains break, and a burst of _power_ comes from all of them.

Another burst comes shortly thereafter, and the only clue she has that anything's wrong is that it came solely from the strange instinct. Everything is quiet after that. Her body hums with power just waiting to be set free, but that instinct, that _voice_ from when her chains were cracked, holds it back. She has a sinking fear that she knows what – no, who – that is. Of course. How could it have been anyone else? Had they been there since they gave her their magic? Or was it her death that let them join themselves to her? What has yet to come?

For all the power she has, she's never felt more powerless.

Things move so quickly now. She doesn't know what's going _on_ but she forces herself to take comfort in that she can feel her brothers next to her now. She knows she shouldn't let herself get so complacent but she's _scared_ in a way she can't remember being before. When she went to go fight Wiseman it was to defeat an enemy and that was that. Now she has no idea what she'll be forced to do. At least when she fought Wiseman all of her choices were her own.

But were they really? Yes. Be firm. She was still herself before her death. She's still herself now. Can she still say that even if her body isn't hers anymore? Yes. It hasn't been hers for a long time.

Enough, she tells herself. That's enough.

She can feel herself _move_ again, and before she can get used to the feeling she's... she's... no. _No_. She can see a room filled with things she cannot recognize. She hears the noises they make over the noises of the battle happening just nearby. Smell? Blood. Taste? Steel. She has _senses_ again, but before she can get overwhelmed by them she realizes that she's not the only one who does. She was one with her brothers before their final battle. Now they've been reunited on a level she hadn't thought was possible. But she'd been naïve. They all had.

She realizes with a sick dread that this is what the Dark Brethren had planned for many many years ago. They were just channels. All the stories were true, in the end. Mindless destruction, that was what they wanted. And hadn't she seen it at the Battlefields of Atria? Her recognizing it then would change things just as much as her recognizing it now, that is, not at all. After all of the magic she was given, why should they not have been powerful enough to make her and her siblings into one body?

It shouldn't have been like this, not like this, never like this.

The Dark Brethren use her body to start draining the life of those who had come to confront them. Her horror at what she's become is matched by the horror that she can't stop herself. Now there's nothing blinding her to her actions; she can see what's going on perfectly clearly. She wishes she had that shield again. She doesn't want to know. It doesn't last too long before there's pain again. Why? She thought that was gone. When she sees what's going on she knows the rage she's feeling isn't just theirs. Those mages? Still? Why can't they just _leave her alone_? The laughing madwoman decides it's time to leave. The Dark Brethren follow her back to... back to the Zaurak Keep, though they call it by a different name now.

The Dark Brethren lick their wounds in their impenetrable fortress before they decide to do what they'd revived themselves to do. She's back on the Earth again. She doesn't recognize it at all. The air is different. Even in this sick form she knows something is _wrong_. But she has no time to think about it before she watches herself slaughter an entire village of innocents. No time to think about it before she's forced into battle. Is she screaming again? She thinks she can hear herself this time. After all, there's nobody else it could possibly be.

They're defeated once again, retreat to their stronghold once again. But now they're strong enough to cast her and her brothers _out_. They stand in different chambers scattered throughout the Keep, impervious to the monsters that lie crawling within. The Dark Brethren project her image into the Keep's entrance hall, and the only reason she knows it's her brothers projected alongside her is who else would share that fate? She doesn't recognize them anymore, giant ghoulish creatures with fire lining different parts of their bodies, and she knows that they're thinking the same thing about her, unrecognizable with her legs burning burning burning. Powerless to flee, but powerful enough to defend themselves, all they can do is wait to be destroyed.

So be it.

Her connection to her brothers was severed as soon as they had bodies once again. She doesn't know if she's the first these people fight, the last, or somewhere in between. But her own power hasn't changed that much, and she calls on the wind to be her shield. These people are strong; of course they are, they wouldn't have been able to fight through the keep to get to her if they weren't. Soon enough, almost inevitably with how things seem to work out for her, the battle turns. Though she gives it her all, she's so out of practice that it's almost embarrassing how quickly she finds herself losing. She's down to her last, and her last thought before her battle is over is that perhaps it's fitting for the one who'd cracked her chains to be the one to give the final blow. _His gaze is natural now_ , she thinks, as she lays bleeding out. _Good_.

But there is still more to be done, it seems. Of course there is. The Dark Brethren wouldn't let them go so easily. Another defeat? It's nothing. Defeat doesn't equal freedom. It didn't before and there's no reason why it would now.

Just when she thinks she's going to die and stay dead this time, her body is whisked away to the depths of the Keep and placed in a throne. She isn't unconscious, and she doesn't know if it's because she's strong enough on her own to stay awake or because they wouldn't let her be. Weakened, she can barely sit up straight. She isn't the first, and then the rest of her brothers join her, and then. So many _people_. Her head hurts. She just wants quiet.

She can't understand the confrontation taking place in front of her. She's too wary to wonder what's happening. Soon enough, the madwoman joins herself to the Dark Brethren, and her entire body is engulfed in flames before she too is one with them once again.

But not even the Dark Brethren are powerful enough to defeat the people who stormed the Keep. They pull the madwoman out and repair the sources for the magic used to seal them away so long ago. Her body starts to dissolve, and. _Oh_. This time their magic doesn't hurt at all. She's free. It's been so long she's forgotten what that was like. Her body is her own, her power is her own. And what to do now? Slowly, she turns her head, and sees the continents falling back to the Earth. She stares, and then it hits her, and before she knows it she's moving. She can break her nation's fall, and she catches it just in time. Out of the corners of her eyes she sees that her brothers had the same thought. Still, after all this time.

She realizes that over the countless years despite everything she's grown to love this nation and its people. She wouldn't let their return to the earth annihilate them.

This is it. She can feel herself slowly fading away. She's tired, and finally, finally, after a thousand years she can finally rest. Diadem's weight is heavy yet comfortable on her shoulders. As the stone envelopes her mutilated twisted body, she quietly begins to feel her last.

But even had Malpercio been a true god, it would have only been one among many.

She doesn't know what's going on, until she gasps. The wind in the Shrine rustles her hair, even while she lies on the ground, and she finds it calming, soothing. Her fists clench, fingers scraping, and she chooses to simply lie there for a few seconds, not yet believing what's happening. She sighs, not realizing until she does that she was holding her breath. It doesn't fully hit her until she does so that she's _breathing_ again. She doesn't know what to think. She knows she doesn't deserve this, while she's nervous, excited, and hoping against hope that her brothers share her second chance. She breathes, the sound drowned out by the wind, and the stone floor is cold against her thighs and arms.

Her eyes open.


End file.
